_( Thrice.)_ Jesus set poor sinners free, De green trees a-flamin'.

_( Thrice_.) Jesus set poor shiners free, Way down in de valley, Who will rise and go with me?
You've heern talk of Jesus Who set poor shiners free." "De valley" and "de lonesome valley" were familiar words in their religious experience.

To descend into that region implied the same process with the "anxious-seat" of the camp-meeting.

When a young girl was supposed to enter it, she bound a handkerchief by a peculiar knot over her head, and made it a point of honor not to change a single garment till the day of her baptism, so that she was sure of being in physical readiness for the cleansing rite, whatever her spiritual mood might be.

More than once, in noticing a damsel thus mystically kerchiefed, I have asked some dusky attendant its meaning, and have received the unfailing answer,--framed with their usual indifference to the genders of pronouns--"He in de lonesome valley, sa." The next gives the same dramatic conflict, while its detached and impersonal refrain gives it strikingly the character of the Scotch and Scandinavian ballads.
XIII.